The archaeology of ancient Egypt is the study of the archaeology of Egypt, stretching from prehistory through three millennia of documented history. Egyptian archaeology is one of the branches of Egyptology.
Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 led to the Western passion for Egyptian antiquities. In the modern era, the Ministry of State for Antiquities controls excavation permits for Egyptologists. The field can now use geophysical methods and other applications of modern sensing techniques. John Romer, Zahi Hawass, Sarah Parcak, Toby Wilkinson are some of the prominent Egyptologists making excavations in Egypt today.
History English Egyptologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie, known as the "father of Egyptian archaeology", introduced the archaeological techniques of field preservation, recording, and excavation methodology in the mid-1880s. Many highly educated amateurs also travelled to Egypt, including women such as Harriet Martineau, Headley Fellow and Florence Nightingale. In 1882, Amelia Edwards and Reginald Stuart Poole, an employee from the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, decided to create the Egypt Exploration Fund as a way to raise funds for more excavations in the Nile Delta, which had rarely been visited.
First excavations The Rosetta Stone was discovered there in July 1799 by French officer Pierre-François Bouchard during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt. It was the first ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential for deciphering this previously untranslated hieroglyphic script. Jean-François Champollion later broke the code of the Rosetta Stone.
Napoleon's men tried but failed to dig up and remove the statue of Younger Memnon to France during his 1798 expedition. During this attempt that the hole on the right of the torso (just above Ramesses's right nipple) is said to have been made. In 1815, following an idea mentioned to him by his friend Johann Ludwig Burckhardt of digging up the statue and bringing it to Britain, the British consul general Henry Salt hired the adventurer Giovanni Belzoni in Cairo for this purpose. Using his hydraulics and engineering skills, he had it pulled on wooden rollers with ropes to the bank of the River Nile opposite Luxor by hundreds of workmen. However, no boat was yet available to take it up to Alexandria, so Belzoni carried out an expedition to Nubia, returning by October. With French collectors also in the area possibly looking to acquire the statue, he then sent workmen to Esna to obtain a suitable boat and in the meantime carried out further excavations in Thebes. He finally loaded the products of these digs, plus the Memnon, onto this boat and got it to Cairo by 15 December 1816. There he received and obeyed orders from Henry Salt to unload all but the Memnon, which was then sent on to Alexandria and London without him.
Archaeological timeline
19th century The great temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel was discovered in 1813 by the Swiss Orientalist and traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. An enormous pile of sand almost completely covered the facade and its colossal statues, blocking the entrance for four more years. The Paduan explorer Belzoni reached its interior on 4 August 1817.
A life-size sarcophagus of the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Seti I was rediscovered in 1817 by Belzoni in the Valley of the Kings.
The 3,200-year-old Statue of Ramesses II was discovered in 1820 by Giovanni Battista Caviglia at the Great Temple of Ptah near Memphis, Egypt. The statue was found broken in six pieces and earlier attempts at restoration had failed. In 1955, Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser moved it to Bab Al-Hadid Square in Cairo.
The mummy of Seti I was discovered by Émil Brugsch on June 6, 1881, in the mummy cache (tomb DB320) at Deir el-Bahri, and since then, it has been kept at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The mummy of Amenhotep II was discovered in his original sarcophagus in March 1898, by Victor Loret in the KV35 tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
20th century The tomb of Nefertari, QV66, was discovered by Ernesto Schiaparelli in 1904. A flight of steps cut out of the rock gives access to the antechamber, which is decorated with paintings based on chapter seventeen of the Book of the Dead. The astronomical ceiling represents the heavens and is painted in dark blue, with a myriad of golden five-pointed stars. The east wall of the antechamber is interrupted by a large opening flanked by the representation of Osiris to the left and Anubis on the right; this, in turn, leads to the side chamber, decorated with offering-scenes, preceded by a vestibule in which paintings portray Nefertari presented to the deities, who welcome her. On the north wall of the antechamber is the stairway down to the burial-chamber, a vast quadrangular room covering a surface area of about 90 square metres (970 sq ft), its astronomical ceiling supported by four pillars, entirely decorated.
The entrance to KV55 was uncovered by Edward R. Ayrton on 6 January 1907. Its discovery was brought to the attention of Theodore M. Davis the following day. The tomb was first entered on 9 January by Ayrton, Davis, Joseph Lindon Smith, and (as the representative of the antiquities service) Arthur Weigall. On 11 January 1907, the findings were photographed. Ayrton then began clearing the tomb. On 25 January 1907, the coffin and mummy were investigated in situ.
In 1921, while excavating south of the tomb, Howard Carter discovered several items that seem to have originated in KV55. These included a jasper burnisher and some fragments of copper rosettes from a funerary pall.
After a systematic search, beginning in 1915, Carter discovered the actual tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in November 1922. By February 1923, the antechamber had been cleared of everything but two sentinel statues. A day and time were selected to unseal the tomb with about twenty appointed witnesses that included Lord Carnarvon, several Egyptian officials, museum representatives and the staff of the Government Press Bureau. On 17 February 1923, at just after two o'clock, the seal was broken. There were 5,398 items found in the tomb, including a solid gold coffin, face mask, thrones, archery bows, trumpets, a lotus chalice, two Imiut fetishes, gold toe stalls, furniture, food, wine, sandals, and fresh linen underwear. Howard Carter spent ten years cataloging the items.
In 1954, Egyptian archaeologist Kamal el-Mallakh discovered a ship buried in pieces right beside the Great Pyramid of Khufu. It was largely built of Lebanon cedar planking in the "shell-first" construction technique, using unpegged tenons of Christ's thorn. The ship was built with a flat bottom composed of several planks, but no actual keel, with the planks and frames lashed together with Halfah grass and has been reconstructed from 1,224 pieces which had been laid in a logical, disassembled order in the pit beside the pyramid.
Though KV5 was partially excavated as early as 1825, its true extent was discovered in 1995 by Kent R. Weeks and his exploration team. It has proven to be the largest tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and originally contained the mummified remains of some of this king's estimated 52 sons. Approximately 150 corridors and tomb chambers have been located in this tomb as of 2006, and the tomb may contain as many as 200 corridors and chambers.
21st century In June 2000,http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1375708.stm/ BBC News the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM), directed by Franck Goddio, in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry for Antiquities discovered the ancient sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion in today's Abu Qir Bay. The statues of a colossal king and queen are on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum. Other discovered artefacts are exhibited at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and Alexandria National Museum (ANM). The excavations are documented through several publicationsGoddio, Franck, Masson-Berghoff, Aurélia (éd.), "Sunken Cities, Egypt's Lost World ", London, Thames & Hudson, 2016, London. / Catalogue of the exhibition at the British Museum
In June 2011, an archaeological team led by French Egyptologists Pierre Tallet and Gregory Marouard, organized by the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO), restarted work at the site. Among other materials, a collection of hundreds of papyrus fragments was found in 2013 dating back 4500 years. The papyrus is currently exhibited at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass called this ancient papyrus "the greatest discovery in Egypt in the 21st century".
In March 2017, the Egyptian-German team of archaeologists unearthed an eight-meter 3,000-year-old statue that included a head and a torso thought to depict Pharaoh Ramses II. According to Khaled El-Enany, the Egyptian Antiquities Minister, the statue was more likely thought to be King Psammetich I. Excavators also revealed an 80 cm-long part of a limestone statue of Pharaoh Seti II while excavating the site.
In August 2017, archaeologists from the Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of five mud-brick tombs at Bir esh-Shaghala, dating back nearly 2000 years. Researchers also revealed worn masks gilded with gold, several large jars and a piece of pottery with unsolved ancient Egyptian writing on it.
In November 2017(2000-10-25), the Egyptian mission in cooperation with the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology announced the discovery of three 2,000-year-old sunken shipwrecks dated back to the Roman Era in Alexandria's Abu Qir Bay.
In April 2018, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of the head of the bust of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius at the Temple of Kom Ombo in Aswan during work to protect the site from groundwater.
In April 2018, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced the discovery of the shrine of the god Osiris Ptah Neb, dating back to the 25th dynasty in the Temple of Karnak in Luxor.
In July 2018, a German-Egyptian researchers' team head by Ramadan Badry Hussein of the University of Tübingen reported the discovery of an extremely rare gilded burial mask that probably dates from the Saite-Persian period in a partly damaged wooden coffin in Saqqara. The last time a similar mask was found was in 1939. The eyes were covered with obsidian, calcite, and black hued gemstones, possibly onyx. "The finding of this mask could be called a sensation. Very few masks of precious metal have been preserved to the present day, because the tombs of most Ancient Egyptian dignitaries were looted in ancient times", said Hussein.
In July 2018, archaeologists led by Zeinab Hashish announced the discovery of a 2.000-year-old 30-ton black granite sarcophagus in Alexandria. It contained three damaged skeletons in red-brown sewage water. According to archaeologist Mostafa Waziri, the skeletons looked like a family burial with a middle-aged woman and two men. Researchers also revealed a small gold artifact and three thin sheets of gold.
In September 2018, a sandstone sphinx statue was discovered at the temple of Kom Ombo in Aswan. The statue, measuring approximately 28 cm (11 in) in width and 38 cm (15 in) in height, likely dates to the Ptolemaic dynasty.
In September 2018, several dozen caches of mummies dating 2,000 years back were found in Saqqara by a team of Polish archaeologists led by from the Faculty of Oriental Studies of the University of Warsaw.